BabylonBabylon is an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia, with its rulers establishing two important empires in antiquity, namely the 18th century BC Old Babylonian Empire and the 7th–6th century BC Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the city would also be used as a regional capital of other empires, such as the Achaemenid Empire.
Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (əˈkiːmənᵻd; 𐎧𐏁𐏂, Xšāça, ) was the ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC, also known as the First Persian Empire. Based in Western Asia, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time, spanning a total of from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. Around the 7th century BC, the region of Persis in the southwestern portion of the Iranian plateau was settled by the Persians.
Cyrus the GreatCyrus II of Persia (600–530 BC; 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁 Kūruš), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the First Persian Empire. Under his rule the empire embraced all of the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Western Asia and much of Central Asia. Spanning from the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, the empire created by Cyrus was the largest the world had yet seen.
Sargon of AkkadSargon of Akkad (ˈsɑrgɒn; Šarrugi), also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire. He was the founder of the "Sargonic" or "Old Akkadian" dynasty, which he ruled for about a century after his death until the Gutian conquest of Sumer. The Sumerian king list makes him the cup-bearer to king Ur-Zababa of Kish.
BorsippaBorsippa (Sumerian: BAD.SI.(A).AB.BAKI; Akkadian: Barsip and Til-Barsip) or Birs Nimrud (having been identified with Nimrod) is an archeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. The ziggurat is today one of the most vividly identifiable surviving ones, identified in the later Arabic culture with the Tower of Babel. However, modern scholarship concludes that the Babylonian builders of the Ziggurat in reality erected it as a religious edifice in honour of the local god Nabu, called the "son" of Babylon's Marduk, as would be appropriate for Babylon's lesser sister-city.
MardukMarduk (Cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: amar utu.k "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BC), Marduk slowly started to rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BC. In the city of Babylon, Marduk was worshipped in the temple Esagila.
